I would be interested if anyone knows of a good Moon Colony Sim I could get hold of (PC preferably, but XBox or PS2 would be OK).

I was thinking of game play where the following might be included:

1. Sending scouting missions to determin favourable locations.

2. Build up of infrastructure to support habitation.

3. In-situ Resource Utilisation.

4. Population Growth.

5. Commerce.

6. Transportation.

In short anything that you would need to consider in setting up a real colony, you could even throw in a natural dissaster on the Moon or even Earth which would disrupt things and make it more complicated. All this is probably wishful thinking but anyone know of anything that sounds like this?

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Thanks for the link Matt, from the screenshots and discription on wikipedia it appears to be something like the original SimCity2000 video game which I enjoyed playing back in the day. That said the graphics appear to be very crude due to its age (Win95 area) and I would probably be dissappointed, nostalga only gets you so far.

I downloaded the demo from the website to try it out but it refuses to run on XP, even when I followed the instructions to run it in an earlier version of windows, and just kept asking if I wanted to buy the full version so I'm not sure what the game would play like. I think I'll have a look around and see if I can find anything more contempory.

Perhaps John Carmac will write something featuring loads of Armadillo craft and other newspace company's equipment in it, a bit of free advertising for his company?

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I've been playing quite a bit of 20,000 Light Years Into Space, which is much more simple than what you describe, but a nice little puzzle game anyway. Anyone interested in making a moon simulation game a la SimCity would probably do good to start off with one of the FOSS versions, like LinCity-NG or Micropolis (the latter being based on the original SimCity code.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

Sorry, I'm an Free Software kind of guy, so no MS platform lock-in for me. It would be interesting to discuss gameplay mechanics and other requirements here though. See if we can get some kind of design document together.

What would the goal of the game be? Would there be science and technology research to devote resources to, like in Civilisation? Or do we assume that the needed technology is simply available? What kinds of things can be built? What kind of resources are to be found on the moon? What limitations does the player need to overcome?

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

Well, the graphics requirements need not be strenuous. High res 32 bit color sprites would be enough for a top down view. If you want open source and any platform then java-script would be the easiest. A nice little in browser game. I wonder if the spacefellowship would part with a sub domain for such a project.

Maybe start the game as a billionaire who may purchase up-mass, equipment and services from current industry players at current industry prices. Throw in a few more speculative capabilities that are definitely on the horizon. Such as the BA 330 and VASIMR. Perhaps charge a bit more for those to round out development.

Game part 1: getting as much mass to the lunar surface as possible for your dime. or several hundred million dimes as the case may be. Throw in some tragedies and setbacks. Perhaps bring in outside investors at your peril to get more funding.

I wonder if the spacefellowship would part with a sub domain for such a project.

That can be arranged.

However, that is the least to worry or think about, creating a game (managed , completed and programmed several game projects myself), is far from easy, let alone in people's spare time.

Even with a professional team, the management, direction of the project, technology to be used, decision of how the game needs to be etc, will be the most difficult, not the coding or the art.

Else it will end up, build a rocket, fly to the moon, (someone had a good idea) meet the Aliens on the moon, build with them a colony, terraform mars (hey lets add a gardening simulator as well)

I would suggest to start with something very down to earth (and in space :p), relatively easy to manage and develop. My favorite language is c++ (without .net), but C#, Javascript, etc is not a problem.

Vision wise, I would say, make it with php (or similar) and JavaScript, you could use CSS 3D technology in the newest browsers and make it single player and without installation with save games in cookies. http://unity3d.com/ is also quite good for small scale projects (which are all but small to develop in someone's spare time)